So whats the difference between freeride and freestyle?

Never a question I’ve really worried about, but clearly something that’s got a couple of people hot under the collar while reading the Guardian’s homage to the World Free Ride Tour held in Chamonix last week.

Well it seems that  “Freestyle is the acts of performing tricks; freeride is riding powder off-piste. The two are not mutually exclusive – obviously you can pull any trick you want in the middle of a big mountain line, but the definitions of the two words refer to entirely different things. If you wanted to talk about the aforementioned, you would refer to ‘big mountain freestyle’.” Thanks Rak 1v7!

And just to see the difference here are a couple of  video clips – Andreas Hatveit’s ski freestyle

And Thomy Henry, Dave Swanick and Ken Kritier’s freeride.

And finally some Chamonix freeride, with a touch of freestyle…

So you learn something new every day hey.